A COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF POSITIVE POLITENESS STRATEGIES EMPLOYED BY THE TEACHERS OF BACHELOR'S AND MASTER'S LEVEL CLASSES

Abstract

Many communication problems have been attributed to the lack of appropriate politeness strategies and this is particularly relevant in teacher-student classroom interaction. The politeness strategies of students and teachers in the classroom have been investigated in a number of studies; however, only a few studies have comparatively investigated the positive politeness strategies used by the teachers of bachelor's and master's level classes. A qualitative approach was adopted, based on Brown and Levinson's Politeness Strategy Model, to comparatively analyze the positive politeness strategies used by teachers of both bachelor's and master's classes at COMSATS University Islamabad. For this purpose, the direct observation of 20 classes in eight departments was conducted. The results indicate that both groups of teachers at both levels utilized all the fifteen positive politeness sub-strategies identified by Brown and Levinson, with the teachers at the bachelor's level showing more cases (54) than the master's level (38). Bachelor's level teachers tended to use simple tag questions (e.g., “right?”) and the emotionally reassuring promises to alleviate anxiety and establish trust, while master's level teachers preferred more complex tag questions (e.g., “okay?”), presupposition of shared discipline knowledge, and academically oriented promises that acknowledged the students' developing knowledge. The study finds that educational level plays significant role in determining the rate, the structure and the communicative role of positive politeness in classroom discourse.